National Knowledge Exchange Network on participation and engagement in the arts

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This project has been encouraged by the success of a regional network that has been running since 2009 in the North of England. The network has been co-ordinated by Leeds Metropolitan University and supported by Arts Council England. The initiative received good feedback from participants and high quality papers were presented at regional seminars.The current project will develop this initiative at national level through knowledge exchange between academics, policy makers and practitioners. It will share new and existing research through a series of multi disciplinary seminars (drawn from arts policy and management, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology and human geography among others). In addition research will be disseminated through an online resource. The aim will be to explore the relevance of research on cultural participation to broader public policy, in fields including health and wellbeing, youth policy, social inclusion and community development. One of the outcomes of the project will be to define a new training agenda for people working in socially engaged artistic practice, cultural management and policy, in relation to the broader public policy areas mentioned earlier. The project also aims to inform policy through exchange between network participants and the Arts Council England, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and local authorities, and raise the profile of cultural participation for public policy makers more generally, thus contributing to the development of policy for a more vibrant and fairer societyThe links between cultural participation and the public policy going beyond the cultural sector are at present under researched and the project aims to begin to fill this knowledge gap. One issue we will pay particular attention to for new research is that of cold and hot spots of cultural participation, which are directly correlated with geographical patterns of socio-economc inequality. Arts Council England (ACE) are in the process of setting up a special fund called Creative People and Places, to address the problem of low participation in these cold spots. We plan to work in partnership with ACE to deliver a research seminar in one of the pilot locations identified by the Arts Council and disseminate new research into the impact of the Creative People and Places initiative.Other seminars will explore:1) the links between cultural participation and participatory decison making in public policy2) the international dimension of research on cultural participation and its policy implications3) the connections between cultural participation and selected fields of public policy making4) trends and research with a focus on emerging issues such as technological change, young people's values and lifestyles, and issues around intercultural exchange and hybridity.